Why use a Wiki?

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alex.barylski
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Why use a Wiki?

Post by alex.barylski »

I have looked at a few and they seem like CMS systems to me with the exception some use a Wiki-style markup instead of WYSIWYG editor that produces bunk code.

What is it that a Wiki does better than say your average CMS or page editor?

Is it the allowing anonymous users edit content? What are other advantages?
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jaoudestudios
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Re: Why use a Wiki?

Post by jaoudestudios »

We had similar ish conversation in another thread. I am new to the wiki idea too, but from what I understand yes it allows anonymous users to edit the pages (with wiki markup or standard html) but as a safety feature it has a built-in version control system - so the history of the pages can be viewed and rolled back if necessary.

I setup a wiki the other night to have a play (not that I have had the chance just yet) - think papa was going to take a look too. You are welcome to have a play, still not sure what direction I want to take the wiki in, no doubt some opensource resource or something :). The url is http://www.wiki.jaoudestudios.com/index.php/Main_Page
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papa
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Re: Why use a Wiki?

Post by papa »

@jao: I did have a look but can't access it from work. I'll make an account this week, don't think you can add pages without login in etc. :)


Back to topic:

It's not just for anonomous users. We use a wiki at our office and it's a good way to gather information and cross-reference (?) pages. Even though I haven't worked that much with the wiki the impression is that it's very easy and fast which is good for making people use the application at all. It's very common that people sit with tons of documents and information locally on their computer and that's not very good when you have a high rate of employees and consults.

But it's not a replacement, it's just another tool.
josh
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Re: Why use a Wiki?

Post by josh »

Well a wiki is just a community driven CMS. All CMS should have this semantic cross linking of content, as we discussed via PM, although some CMS creators don't care to recognize the difference between a "page" and "content". Wikis treat data as content, and build pages. Stuff like joomla just reads & writes pages. Think of content like knowledge, both are expressed in text in this case, but many pieces of knowledge can go into 1 single page. Knowledge might be expressed inline or as a cross linking of pages
alex.barylski
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Re: Why use a Wiki?

Post by alex.barylski »

I'm not sure what you mean by semantic cross linking?

Joomla actually makes you jump through hoops to link to associated articles/pages/documents and WordPress I'm not even sure how it handles that to be honest.

The best CMS I have seen had a built-in file/image manager that let you easily link to documents, other pages, images, etc right from within the WYSIWYG toolbar.
josh
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Re: Why use a Wiki?

Post by josh »

As in, the CMS would use the text itself to derive the cross referenced content, or use a simple denotation. Like wikis you would write "blah blah blah ''magic keywords''" and the magic keywords text would be replaced with a link to the article on that subject, if it existed.
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